Wednesday, February 23, 2011

I recently finished printing and binding the first two years of Sophia’s life. Sorting through pictures and attempting to document our life 5 years ago has made me look through my camera lens in a different way. I’ve never been good at getting pictures at baby blessings or big trips, but I’m pretty good at capturing what happens every day.

And seeing as how my mom is my number one blog fan, and she’s sure to call me when she sees this post, Hi Mom! Look, it’s a pic of you from when Natalie was born, 4 years ago. I see different things in these pictures, then I did when I took them- like look how great our green walls were! Wow, we still have that blanket! And I miss those huge front windows in our apartment in Utah!

So, back to taking pics of the everyday. I realized I need to take pics around the house, doing some normal things. Here’s some I took the other night, during our nightly milk drinking.

But a scowl when her personal photo session bubble is being infringed upon…

And a fish face when all the milk is almost gone.

Ugh Mom, you’re just so silly….

Leo just wants to look in the lens and see himself.

Even princesses have to do their homework. Sophia’s list of things that start with R included Rapunzel.

There was some dancing afterwards. This picture about sums it up. Natalie is fierce, in the traditional sense of the word.

I still have yet to figure out how to capture that early morning haze of Saturday snuggling.I should practice it more!

But I finally got a pic of the crazy frantic splashing that Leo lives for in the bathtub, and the accompanying huge smiles.

I took some pics as I was playing with Leo a few days ago, with the intent to capture what his life is like right now. And to get a pic that documents his baby blues.

Before the Blue and Gold Banquet John was putting on his cowboy hat and Leo was enthralled by it.

John putting on the smolder, and trying not to laugh, ala Flynn Rider from Rapunzel.

We stopped by Dora and Diego’s the other day…(Children’s Museum of Indianapolis!)

RFID scanners on the animals would tell the computer at the animal hospital what animal it was. I thought it was pretty cool, my kids just think it’s normal for computers to know these things.

Check out those teeth!

Sophia still loves the tracing table most of all. Her most recent purchase from her birthday money was a box of 96 crayons. 5 days later, we still have them all. It’s a miracle. But not that suprising. She’s type A, and an artist. So there ya go.

The author’s main beef with the Princess franchise, is that it primes girls to think only about their appereance and be so focused on it from a young age, that they morph into tweens that wear teenage girl clothes, and teenagers that are overly sexualized and over materialized. I see that phenomenon happening, but I’m not sold on the idea that it is because of Cinderella at age 3. But I see it.

After listening to this piece on NPR, I watched the Bachelor. This week one woman got a shopping spree and could buy whatever she wanted- and she said it was the best day of her life. Really? Those women’s comments all throughout the process of competing for the Bachelor are laced with fairy tale language. Common phrases include: my journey, he spoils me, soulmate, special connection, my whole life is leading up to this point, waiting for someone to sweep me off my feet. All contributing to this idea that it’s a story, they’re a character, and we’re just waiting for the climax to happen. I love to hate it and hate to love it. Guess it’s the social psychiatrist in me, it’s like a experiment gone really wrong, with lots of makeup and roses.

Also had time for…“Conversations” on radio.lds.org (love the Everything Creative discussions and Scripture stories for kids too)

We had this out from the library, and watched some for some homeschool points this week:

Life by BBC and Discovery Channel- it’s like Planet Earth, the sequel. My kids were riveted most of the time. Kind of jarring to do while Yoga though, must admit. Trying to relax and then watching a cheetah chase down an ostrich just doesn't work so much. :)

I loved a lot of things about this series, and then I hated the ending of the season. Left me with a pit in my stomach. I hate it when people sabotage each other and are intentionally hurtful. I need a happy ending, it’s hard to think people are really that mean, and see no redemption or hope for improvement. But as always, loved the dresses they wore.

I’m 1/3 of the way into this book. Written by a Mormon historian, but a pure historical record about the Temple of Jerusalem. Great background and indepth analysis of apographya writings about the Temple, archaeological sites that shed light on it, etc. The one thing I don’t like- his formatting and transistions are terrible. I have to constanstly remind myself of what the line of thinking is and what logic he’s following- he doesn’t lead the reader through the material as much as I’d like.

Wow. I really did do other things this week than make stuff and watch TV, I promise!

Here’s the thing about snow days: It’s kind of our normal schedule. We love being home. John works from home, so we usually eat lunch with him. We joke about taking him out for walks like a dog. I hardly ever feel cramped or like the walls are closing in- especially if I have a normal schedule of cleanup. We are not on the go all the time, so as the snow storms started rolling in, I thought we’d be pretty normal around here. Like summer time, without the summer.

Day 1 was pretty good. The kids played Barbie dolls ALL DAY LONG. Love those Barbies! I started some projects and found time to work out.

By the end of Day 2, something threw off my groove. I had to force myself to be focused, I was like a hummingbird going around to 20 things and accomplishing nothing. I drove myself nuts. Poor John had just ordered a bunch of computer parts and none were arriving because even UPS wasn’t on the roads (it was that bad!).

We started to feel like we were in Plato’s cave, interpreting our lives through the shadows from the weather formations through the windows.

Day 3 we pretended to have school and the girls did “centers” and sang songs and peace and sanity was restored and the sun came out and we all held hands and sang kumbaya and I loved my life again.

Day 4 we went visiting teaching, to McDonald’s and played outside. Everyone and their Mom was at Target. But it felt good to see people again, different people than my kids, that is. Also bought a gate- a much needed purchase.

Here’s some of the things I accomplished and we played with this week, in between buzzing around entertaining children.

Hearty Bread for Soups and Sandwiches- multiple rising times give it a sourdough flavor, baking stone and water spritzes give it a crunchy crust. With lentil soup- heaven!

Homemade Oreos, aka Chocolate Wafer cookies from Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. They were crispy and the cream filling is spot on to oreos. So good. The trick is to keep putting the dough in the freezer between steps so it was firm while rolling it out, so you didn’t need more flour or overwork the dough.

We didn’t want OREO on ours though- so we pulled out some letter stamps and wrote out messages instead.

The second day of eating these I realized they could be improved. Enter the peppermint oil into the cream filling. And then Sophia didn’t like them- double score, more for me!

Connectagons- the best toy ever. I can feel my brain expanding as I play with them, and practically see the wheels in my kids head turning. One of our centers during our mock kindergarten.

Leo conquering the stairs. We now have to rearrange our living room to let him play downstairs. He is Speedy Gonzalez.

The Just Do It- when I gave a lesson about scripture reading with your kids, that was a theme that

emerged- just do it! Props to Susan my neighbor for the catch phrase, oh yeah, and Nike.

the back- plastic lids acting as filler so the magnet touches the fridge.

And I finally put magnets on the back of a bunch of vintage cereal ads I laminated years ago. (Don’t you love how some craft projects have a fermentation period? It took me all of an hour to do these magnets, but I waited 2 years to do it.)

Last but not least- another work in progress…

I've started printing Sophia’s scrapbooks so I can bind and pretend like I’m not really 4 and a half years behind on getting the pictures to a file and the printer.

If only I could convince my printer to like me and stop going all 2001: A space odyssey on me and rebelling and having a mind of it’s own….

Hooray for productive snow days! Another post on media in just a moment….

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

I have distinct memories of trying to ride my bike on a sheet of ice in middle school. Went along great until I had to brake. Yikes.

I didn’t see anybody that dumb around my neighborhood- but I did see people re enacting Happy Feet penguin footage and sliding around on their stomachs. My girls did some ice skating. Maybe tomorrow we’ll sled around.

I’ve gotten an extra jolt of craftiness this week, so the kids have been dutifully playing with every toy in the house. I'm knee deep in three projects, something always seems to come up before I can finish. Such is life, right?

Here’s some pics of the ice and my kiddos. I played around with selective focus today and ventured out into selective exposure time so the snow was white and not gray.